best way to transfer vinyl for podcast

[nightfly61]

I have massive amounts of records to transfer to digital for podcasting.
1. Should I buy a USB turntable to make it easier?
2. Should I transfer them as wav. files?
3. I have a Mac & a regular Dell. The Mac has Soundtrack Pro, Adobe Soundbooth CS4, Renoise & Adobe audition 3.0.
The Dell has Audition 1.5. Which(I'm thinking Audition 3.0) would be the best to feed the songs in with & since most are clean copies should I still run any processing or leave them raw tracks? Thanks & have a great weekend!

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I haven't used one of the digital turntables, so take my observation as maybe being worth about as much as you have paid me for it. ;D

I guess you could pick the wrong one, or get a bad production model, but using the USB-digital turntable makes the process simple compared to all the gizmos and gadgets you might have to chain together otherwise. It also gets around the issue of whether you have an adequate sound card for the task.

The digital "stuff" that comes in via the USB is going to be raw digital audio which saved to a hard drive as is gets named .wav with out any processing being done to muddy anything up. Whether you save it in a .wav format long term becomes the question. You want to do your editing while it is still .wav..... things like chopping the silence off each end, taking out clicks, doing a bit of EQ if needed and and if appropriate, a bit of noise reduction. Only AFTER any such processing do you want to convert the audio to mp3 or whatever format will go into the Podcast.

If the Podcast is going to contain voice content I would prefer to put the voice and the audio from the vinyl into a finished podcast before I did any transfer to another format such as mp3 but from your description you could possibly have more material to store than you have space for. This will be easy for me to say: I'm spending YOUR money not mine.... but consider buying one of those external hard-drives that connects via USB for storage. I'm seeing 1-Terabyte units for something just north of $100 these days.

I would use the software for editing that you are most comfortable using. I have become an Audition "bigot" for that reason. You may have another software that is technically better, but using the one that let's you squeeze out the sound and editing style you want is the critical issue. Once you compress down to mp3 or other such Podcast format, whatever audio superiority one editing program has over another may be lost in the squeeze.

Not to be too much like a mother on this issue, but do keep in mind what kind of copyright issues you may need to satisfy.

 

[djgex]

I recently put all of my vinyl onto cd for when im djing because im over lugging around a stack of records with my cds!

I just hooked my regular turntable into the computer, gave the records a clean then recorded straight into Adobe Audition. A few of them needed a bit of processing to remove the larger clicks and hissing, when i play the tracks in clubs now they sound perfect.

Defiantly agree with Rodeo Cowboy though... NEVER SAVE AS MP3 UNTIL YOUR FINISHED EDITING!!!!!! MP3 is a lossy format so always work with the wav file until your done then save as an MP3.

 

[Sgeirk]

I transferred all of my vinyl last year...about 80 12"'s (remixes) and a few lp's are all I had left.

I highly recommend a 1TB external HD, however, have a backup...they die, too. Keep everything as a wav file until the last minute.

If you're concerned about overall sound quality...I hear that the USB TT's have a tinny sound to them. But, for a podcast...they'd work fine, I'm sure.

I bought a new stylus for my old Technics 1200...cleaned all my records, hooked up to a Denon amp, feeding a Roland mini recorder which does linear wav...I'd just remove the SD card and dump them onto the laptop for easy editing. Did the same with old airchecks, too. freed up quite a bit of storage space...bits and bytes really do take up less space.

 

[NHRadio]

If anyone wants my 2 cents:
I use the NAD PP-3 USB preamp with my Technics SP-15, but any TT will work. Audition 1.5 is great, but a simpler program (PC vinyl studio) comes with the NAD unit.
I save as both WAV to my deep storage drive and MP3's for Itunes.
IMHO, I'd transfer with no processing and then apply click/pop or noise suppression as needed...with Audition you can undo it if you went too far.

I have massive amounts of records to transfer to digital for podcasting.
1. Should I buy a USB turntable to make it easier?
2. Should I transfer them as wav. files?
3. I have a Mac & a regular Dell. The Mac has Soundtrack Pro, Adobe Soundbooth CS4, Renoise & Adobe audition 3.0.
The Dell has Audition 1.5. Which(I'm thinking Audition 3.0) would be the best to feed the songs in with & since most are clean copies should I still run any processing or leave them raw tracks? Thanks & have a great weekend!